I know that this is a blog about Storefront Safety, and I know that many readers would be unaware that a good part of my life has been spent protecting people and property and government facilities from criminals and terrorists. It is one of the reasons that I know so much about preventing low speed crashes at storefronts -- if you can stop a terrorist driving a 15,000LB truck filled with explosives and coming at you at 50 MPH, well, it is not hard to figure out how to stop a Toyota at 20 MPH.

So it is not such a departure for me professionally to call your attention to the latest "Terror By Vehicle" attack, this time in London. And remember -- if a terrorist of any persuasion decides to take out as many people as he can, retail shops, offices, shopping malls and pedestrian areas will be obvious soft targets.

These attacks are NOT unexpected and are in fact quite predictable. Israel has suffered these attacks for several years. "Crude but effective" works great for terrorists. Last year a Honda sedan was used to attack a group of students at Ohio State University, and the casualty count for the Berlin and Nice attacks came to nearly 100 dead and just under 500 injured. Today, in London, another 3 dead and twenty injured.

The newspapers are trying their best to cover the story. Lots of details will be coming to light in the next 24 hours. But note this well: Anyone who thinks that America will not be seeing this sort of "Terror By Truck" is in for a very sad realization.

A member of the public is treated by emergency services near Westminster Bridge and Parliament on March 22 in London. An assailant drove into people on the bridge and later fatally stabbed a police officer. (Carl Court/Getty Images)LONDON — Wednesday's attack in London involved one of terrorists' new favorite tactics: driving a vehicle into a crowd.

In July, a terrorist in Nice drove a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera, killing 84. And in December, a man rammed a vehicle into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12.In London, a vehicle plowed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, leaving at least two dead and 20 injured. The attacker then stabbed a police officer at the gates of Parliament before being gunned down.[Attacker kills 3, injures 20 in London; terrorism suspected.] Specialists say this latest incident is in line with an emerging model of strikes involving simple, everyday instruments but carried out in locations sure to draw global attention.“Terrorists rely on a lot of people watching — it can be even better than having a lot of people dead,” said Frank Foley, a scholar of terrorism at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. “This person appears to have chosen relatively rudimentary weapons, and there was no explosion as far as we can tell. But they've attacked a very prominent target, Parliament and Westminster Bridge, and so they've immediately flooded the media. Every television station in Europe and America will be carrying this tonight and tomorrow.”Experts on terrorism in the U.K. said Wednesday's incident also marked a departure from Britain's relative success in fending off such attacks, particularly compared to neighbors France and Belgium.“Britain has actually been reasonably quiet,” said Steve Hewitt, who studies surveillance and counterterrorism at the University of Birmingham. Notable exceptions, he said, include the so-called “7/7” suicide bomb attacks in 2005 in central London, the murder of British Army soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 and the murder of Labor MP Jo Cox last year.Hewitt suggested that the strength of British defense owed to the expertise of the police and security services, as well as long-term experience dealing with terrorism, going back to the activities of the Irish Republican Army. “It's hard to make a claim that this represents an escalation,” he said. “It's a fairly rare occurrence in the U.K. It's actually somewhat surprising it hasn’t happened more before.”Strict regulation of firearms in Britain — as compared to the United States, where such attacks have often unfolded at the end of a barrel of a gun — lowers the scale of violence that is possible, Hewitt said. “We live in a country where there are tight gun-control laws, as opposed to in the U.S., where a lone individual acquiring a weapon often legally can cause major death and destruction very quickly,” Hewitt said.Of course, though, the risk of relatively low-impact assaults is always present, and immensely difficult to mitigate. “How do you stop someone driving down the street who just decides to drive their car into pedestrians?” he asked.The answer to that question has become increasingly vital in the past few years. as terrorists have begun to shift tactics. In the past, the focus was on large-scale, spectacular attacks that involved scores of people and meticulous training. More recently though, groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have called for more spontaneous acts of terror by any means necessary. And these groups have highlighted the potential of automobiles not as car bombs, packed with detectable explosives, but as unpredictable ramming weapons.

As far back as 2010, al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch encouraged the use of trucks as a weapon. Inspire, its official magazine, ran a piece headlined, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” which called on followers to use a truck as a “mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.” The three-page article includes tips on maximizing casualties, guidance on the best vehicles to use and a photo of an American Thanksgiving parade, describing it as “an excellent target.”In a 2014 video message, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the chief spokesman for the Islamic State, told listeners, “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him.”A November 2016 issue of the Islamic State's Rumiyah magazine extolled the virtues of using large load-bearing trucks to cause a “bloodbath.”“We have reached a stage where terrorist organizations want to create an environment in which they could hit anywhere at any time, using whatever method,” a European security official told my colleagues last year. “The videos and messages against France and other European countries have been published in various social-media platforms, with the message to ‘use whatever to kill, even cars.’ ”Amanda Erickson reported from Washington.

Goleta California in October. Kettering Ohio and Encinitas California this week. Three storefront crashes at Trader Joe's stores in three months. For a chain that values and promotes its image of a happy team working to serve happy communities, these three crashes (after more than a half dozen over the last three years) show a large gap between what gets said and what gets done at Trader Joe's.

Since announcing their comprehensive storefront protection program called “Universal Parameters for Site Safety Low Speed Barriers" in 2015, Trader Joe's has suffered a number of additional crashes and suffered millions of dollars in judgements and settlements stemming from storefront crashes. Apparently, progress has been very slow on their protection program, because none of the photos of Goleta, Kettering, or Encinitas show any sort of protection for pedestrians, customers, and employees.

The Grocery Industry has been ON NOTICE for years that this problem exists -- insurers, risk managers, and safety folks like the Storefront Safety Council have all documented the problem. Programs that have been announced and/or already underway by companies in the grocery industry are being praised and recognized by many, including our own Storefront Safety Initiative. On that topic, please see www.storefrontsafetyinitiative.org

With something more than 60 vehicle-into-building crashes per day, storefront crashes are a national problem. They will not stop by themselves. If a company announces a safety program and does a poor job of follow-through, what is the message they are sending to employees and customers? Ask Cumberland Farms, who lost a Massachusetts case last year that will cost them several tens of millions of dollars in damages for a single wrongful death of a customer.

A Trader Joe's grocery store suffered a serious injury crash on 8 October. A vehicle operated by an elderly driver crashed into the storefront -- the cause of the accident is as yet unknown. However, the lack of protection from such accidents is VERY WELL KNOWN. A rash of similar crashes caused Trader Joe's to initiate "Universal Parameters For Site Safety" which includes the installation of barriers to protect storefront from oncoming vehicles.

Trader Joe's has paid large damage awards in previous accidents, and has initiated a program to prevent such incidents from happening again. But good intentions are not the same as good progress -- we will be continuing to monitor their progress. Sadly, we just have to keep watching the news to see how they are doing.

September is National Preparedness Month -- it has been designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a time for civilians, government, businesses, and institutions to join together to start planning to prevent tragedy and catastrophe BEFORE disasters occur.

The best way for any business to prepare for the disaster of a vehicle crashing into a building is to prevent the crash in the first place. Planning and best practices and simple efforts can pay off in the form or decades of safe operation and zero vehicle disasters at your business or property.

For more from DHS and the full story on how businesses should prepare for disasters can be found HERE﻿

Illinois, Texas, California, Ohio. Kentucky, North Carolina, and Indiana. There is almost no state in the U.S. where gun shops have not been under attack -- and almost no state where any mandated preventive measures of significance is underway to stop the attacks.

Here is the length that one store owner in Rocklin California went to in order to prevent thieves from ramming vehicles into his store:

These Crash & Grab ramraids are dangerous, they are costly, and they result in guns and ammunition available on the street to people who would not legally be able to purchase them. At a time when gun crime is highly visible and crimes against police becoming more and more of a concern, the lack of coordinated action by the ATF, insurance underwriters, store owners, and local law enforcement is baffling.

Defending storefronts (and back entrances) is simple and does not need to be very expensive. Two years ago, ASTM announced the completion of a new test standard (F-3016) which is used to test and verify the effectiveness of any kind of barrier subjected to a 30MPH impact from a 5000LB vehicle. Such bollards or barriers would be perfectly capable of preventing vehicle-into-building thefts such as we are seeing now in these sorts of cases.

Why hasn't the retail firearms industry taken this up? I have not seen anything from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (http://www.nssf.org) despite more than two years of communication on my part. I have not seen anything from the American Firearms Retailers Association (http://www.theafra.org/) or even the NRA. Local law enforcement bears the brunt of the crime AND the consequences of guns on the street illegally, and are limited to action in their own communities. As for the insurance companies and the ATF -- I guess we will need to wait for information from them before we have an answer to why they remain in the background.

Crash & Grab ramraids at gun shops are foreseeable, they are predictable, and they are preventable. I think it is past time to be increasing prevention and increase safety for everyone.

AB-2161, written and championed by California State Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-20), passed the California Assembly and Senate with no dissenting votes, and was signed into law July 22 by Governor Jerry Brown. The new law makes California the first state in the U.S. to encourage through statute the use of protective safety barriers at vulnerable locations including parking lots, retail centers, office buildings and restaurants.

The law "provides that the use of certain vehicle barriers at a commercial property may be considered by insurers as safety devices that qualify for a discount on the owner's insurance premiums," explained Storefront Safety Council Co-Founder Rob Reiter. "Prior to adoption of the appropriate standards by the California Building Standards Commission, the new law defines an appropriate barrier as a device 'that is installed to protect persons located within, in, or on the property of, buildings, or to protect pedestrians, from collisions into those buildings by motor vehicles'."

Assemblyman QuirkAssemblyman Quirk worked on the bill for two years, with support from The Storefront Safety Council and many stakeholders, and with staff support from Legislative Assistant Miranda Flores in the 2016 term and from Dr. Scott Sellars, 2014-2015 Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the California State Legislature, during the 2015 term. The full text of the bill and the legislative counsel's digest is available online, and is reprinted below:

The Storefront Safety Council applauds the hard work of Assemblyman Quirk and his staff. This important legislation sets the pace for the rest of the nation, costs taxpayers nothing, and will help guide standards and building codes in California and nationally in the coming months and years. The use of discounts as an incentive to property owners and businesses will encourage adoption of these safety measures even for older properties that want to reduce liability risks today and amortize savings over longer timelines.

Assembly Bill No. 2161CHAPTER 73

An act to add Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 11895) to Part 3 of Division 2 of the Insurance Code, relating to parking lots.

[Approved by Governor July 22, 2016. Filed with Secretary of State July 22, 2016.]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGESTAB 2161, Quirk. Parking lots: design: insurance discount.Existing law provides that building standards shall be filed by the California Building Standards Commission with the Secretary of State and codified only after they have been approved by the commission. Existing law regulates the issuance and renewal of liability insurance policies in this state.This bill would authorize an insurer to consider the installation of vehicle barriers as a safety measure and would authorize an insurer to provide or offer a discount on the property owner’s insurance covering damage or loss to the covered commercial property or liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of the commercial property relative to the reduced risk of installation of the barriers. The bill would require that any discounts be determined to be actuarially sound and approved by the Insurance Commissioner prior to their use.

BILL TEXTTHE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 11895) is added to Part 3 of Division 2 of the Insurance Code, to read:CHAPTER 6. Commercial Property Parking Lots: Vehicle Barrier Discount11895. (a) An insurer may consider the installation of vehicle barriers as a safety measure and may provide or offer a discount on the property owner’s insurance covering damage or loss to the covered commercial property or liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of the commercial property relative to the reduced risk to the property as a result of installation of the barriers if the discount provided or offered is provided or offered consistent with Article 10 (commencing with Section 1861.01) of Chapter 9 of Part 2 of Division 1.(b) For the purposes of this section, a vehicle barrier is a safety device that meets, at a minimum, the vehicle impact protection standards as provided by the State Fire Marshal and adopted by the California Building Standards Commission and that is installed to protect persons located within, in, or on the property of, buildings, or to protect pedestrians, from collisions into those buildings by motor vehicles.(c) Any discounts on insurance provided in accordance with this section shall be determined to be actuarially sound and approved by the commissioner prior to their use.

I am not a lawyer, but I am very troubled by something that I think should be addressed by firearms retailers and local law enforcement agencies.

Crash & Grab ramraids are very common thefts in the United States. Hundreds if not thousands of them occur every single week. Very often, the targets are cell phones at electronics stores, ATM machines at convenience stores, high end designer goods at retail stores, and of course cash and jewelry.

Now if such thefts occur at these types of stores, the effects are pretty limited; some company will deliver a new ATM machine, more iPhones will arrive via UPS, and some folks will get a great deal on stolen handbags on eBay.

But what if the successful thieves make off with a carload of guns?

Please take a look at the photo above -- it shows the storefront of a firearms store in Rocklin California, which is quite near Sacramento. How can a gun store that calls itself The Gun Vault have ABSOLUTELY NO PROTECTION WHATSOEVER against thieves who crashed in through the front door using nothing bigger or more powerful than -- wait for it -- a 1998 Nissan Maxima?????????????

This is irresponsible -- that storefront could have been protected for less than the cost of the doors that now have to be replaced. And now an "undisclosed number" of pistols are out on the street.

Like I said -- I am not a lawyer. But if those guns are used in a crime, and they are traced back to this incident, is the store owner's failure to take very simple and affordable steps to secure his storefront against such a common crime going to be something that results in a claim against the store?

People -- you never want to be the softest target on the block. Especially if you are going to call your business The Gun Vault. This was a foreseeable event and the failure to protect the storefront now puts the public and police officers at increased risks.

Another car crashes into another grocery store......and once again, another grocery store with no protective barriers sacrifices pedestrians and customer and employees who might be grabbing a shopping cart or entering or exiting through one of the doors. In this accident in Brick Township in New Jersey, two pedestrians were injured when a vehicle driven by an 88 year-old lost control while coming down the drive aisle car aimed directly at the store. The photo above shows the result -- except for the two injured pedestrians, who were transported to hospitals, one by medevac flight. Photo and great coverage from Shorebeat.com HERE

Now you may say that this was a fluke accident, except that the Storefront Safety Council has documented hundreds of such crashes and has raised awareness of the risks to the public that the grocery industry (and the property owners who build and own these buildings and centers) have for the most part simply tolerated.

In addition, this accident was not a fluke at all -- a quick review of this photo I took off of Google Earth clearly shows that any vehicle driving in the parking lot to park in any of the spaces in this particular drive aisle is aimed directly at the ShopRite store. ShopRite should know better -- after all, they have been defendants in a number of cases like this one over the years. You would think taking action to improve safety would be much cheaper than paying out injury claims over and over again....

So three weeks after the last blog post about the grocery industry being ON NOTICE, here is another one -- because these accidents just keep happening and the inaction shows that the industry as a whole has elected to ignore this known hazardous condition to persist. For a link to our previous Grocery Industry blog post (and the post before that one!) you will find it HERE.

There are better designs for parking lots, for traffic flows, for storefront alignments and construction, and for simple and effective barriers. Twenty accidents PER DAY in the convenience store / small market portion of the grocery industry alone. Hundreds more per year throughout the rest of the industry.

Oh -- I had said there were TWO crashes. Same day, same result. Different circumstances. But this accident was in a location where security camera video was available. The video will show you what the previous story did not -- it sucks to be inside a store when a driver crashes through the front door. Story and video ﻿HERE﻿

The last time I wrote specifically about the grocery store industry, it was March of 2014. Things have NOT improved since then. That post HERE

Since that time, the incident continue to occur and progress in preventing them remains slow. Other than Trader Joe's, I am not aware of any national chains who have initiated new national plans to prevent injuries to their employees, their customers, or pedestrians by retrofitting entrances or parking lots. The latest one that caught my eye just occurred at an ALDI store near Cincinnati Ohio Great coverage from WLWT Channel 5 TV HERE

As we all know, storefront crashes (and you do not get more literal than in this case) are usually head on crashes into entrances or near entrances. Most often, there are nose-in parking spaces in front of the store and the accident is a result of a driver error or driver pedal error when pulling into the parking space. In this case, there was no nose-in parking. Why then would a vehicle end up heading nose into the entrance to ALDI's?? Simple answer: cars are AIMED at the front doors of this store.

As my colleague Mark Wright has stated, cars aimed at storefronts are "like a loaded gun" that might go off at any time. Having been a victim of a just such a crash, Mark knows better than just about anyone just how dangerous such crashes are and just how fast they happen.

So how was the car in the photo above from WLWT aimed at the entrance to the ALDI store? Simple -- the parking lot is laid out so that vehicles are moving directly at the entrance under acceleration. Poor design, easy to protect against. This Google Street View image shows exactly what the problem is:

Cars driving down the drive aisle are pointed directly at the storefront. Clear sailing straight in -- there is even a curb cut out for the shopping carts to make the vehicle's run over the sidewalk even easier. Cars under acceleration can fail to stop or fail to turn for any of a number of reasons, including driver medical emergencies, driver distraction, driver impairment, or simple driver error.

There are many ways to design away this problem in the parking lot. Even less expensive would be to put simple safety barriers up (as Trader Joe's is doing) to make sure that approaching vehicles cannot get across the sidewalk and strike the building employees inside, customers entering or exiting, or pedestrians just passing by. Walmart does this at their Neighborhood Markets before they open, as do many others.

So ALDI and the rest of the grocery industry -- YOU ARE ON NOTICE that there is a known hazardous condition at your storefronts. By any standard of care, you as lessee and your property owners as lessors are failing to address this condition, which results in preventable injuries and fatalities.

Once again, an angry driver has used his vehicle as a battering ram to gain entry to a government building. A Utah man, angry that his driving license had been suspended as a result of a DUI, decided to lodge his complaint by lodging his RV in the front doors of the Utah State licensing office in West Valley City, Utah. He then shot himself while inside his vehicle.

For video and photos and a full report, please see the coverage from KSTU Fox 13 in Salt Lake City by clicking on this LINK

This blog (and other articles that I have written or interviews that I have done) have many times referred to such accidents as being a very real and ongoing threat. Angry drivers crash into hotel lobbies to complain about their bill, they crash their way into court houses because they think they have been treated unfairly, and they crash into divorce attorney's offices because they feel that they have been profoundly victimized. Other drivers have crashed into stores to try and injure their wife or girlfriend, they have crashed into stores simply to try and hurt people, and sometimes there does not seem to be any reason at all.

Knowing that this risk is real, simple prevention seems to be prudent to protect employees and the public. Risk management principles are very clear -- if you cannot prevent the bad behavior, prevent the person behaving badly from being able to drive their car through an entrance. Knowing that such deliberate attacks on state office buildings do occur, authorities should have performed a risk assessment and then acted upon the results of that assessment to prevent such an occurrence at this location.

Take a look at the photo above again, and now take a look at the photo below -- does it look like anyone in authority at this state office building correctly assessed the risk, and then took corrective action to prevent such a vehicle attack on a building entrance? It sure does not look that way to me -- I have made recommendations to protect hundreds of entrances over the years, and this looks like a very neglected and very vulnerable location to me.

Copyright 2018 by Rob Reiter. All rights reserved. Content may be freely copied and distributed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice and our World Wide Web URL http://www.storefrontcrashexpert.com.